Euro MP calls delegates 'sluts'

By Matthew Holehouse

22 September 2013 — 3:00am

Godfrey Bloom, one of the UK Independence Party's most controversial members, has been suspended after he called a group of female conference delegates ''sluts''.

Mr Bloom, a European Parliament member who once referred to countries that receive aid as ''Bongo Bongo Land'', had the party whip withdrawn after he made the comments to delegates who were challenging him over his view that a woman's role is ''cleaning behind the fridge''. He later got into a row with a journalist, whom he hit over the head with a party booklet.

Suspended: Godfrey Bloom.

Photo: Reuters

Party leader Nigel Farage said the episode had ''destroyed'' the party's annual conference and robbed it of the chance of positive press coverage. Mr Farage had hoped to use the gathering to present a more modern and professional face of UKIP.

Less than an hour before the outburst, Mr Farage told delegates of his ambition for the party to come first in the European elections next year and hold the balance of power in the next general election. But he warned activists that rivals would readily exploit offensive gaffes.

The incident, witnessed by Mr Farage's wife, Kirsten, occurred after Mr Bloom was challenged at a women's fringe event by former byelection candidate Jane Collins, who told him: ''I have never cleaned behind my fridge''. Mr Bloom replied: ''This place is full of sluts.''

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Mr Bloom told Sky News: ''I made a joke and said 'oh well you're all sluts' and everybody laughed including all the women.''

He later told Allegra Stratton, a BBC reporter, that the term referred to an untidy person, adding: ''Did your mother never call you a slut?''

Mr Farage said Mr Bloom's behaviour had been ''selfish'' and was overshadowing ''all the good things'' happening at the conference. He told party activists: ''We can't have any one individual, however fun or flamboyant or entertaining or amusing they are, destroying UKIP's national conference.

''The trouble with Godfrey is that - he is not a racist, he's not an extremist or any of those things and he's not even anti-women - but he has a sort-of rather old fashioned territorial army sense of humour which does not translate very well in modern Britain.

''What he ought to have learnt is that time and time again he says things that overshadow the whole agenda that UKIP is fighting for.

''My opinion is Godfrey has gone beyond the pale.''

Mr Bloom also hit Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick over the head with a copy of UKIP's conference guide and then called him a racist. Crick had confronted him over why there were ''no black faces'' on the cover of the conference brochure.